No more rubbish blockbusters, please. As a cop in the startling End of Watch, Jake Gyllenhaal is now in pursuit of realism and danger

R
ound, close-set eyes, long face, upturned nose, beatific grin... No matter
how hard one tries to banish the thought, when you see Jake Gyllenhaal, you
can’t stop the image of Woody from Toy Story popping into your head. Maybe
that’s why he got cast in Brokeback Mountain; perhaps Heath Ledger reminded
the producers of Buzz. Today, though, the picture is somewhat skewed,
because Gyllenhaal’s youthful looks are obscured by an added cartoonish
adornment — a beard of such pirate-captain volume and lustre, you suspect
there’s a band around his head, holding it in place.

We are used to black-clad ­Hollywood bucks disfiguring themselves in the name
of art, as if handsomeness precludes integrity, so this is nothing out of
the ordinary. The face rug is, however, for a part; he’s appearing in If
There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet at the Laura Pels Theatre, in New York.